game-breaking update (v15) - not cool, rimworld developers

[pawn_of_destiny]

Dear Ludeon,

Today's (August 28, 2016) v15 update to RimWorld totally destroyed my (very lengthy) game-in-progress. This is frustrating to me and very uncool of your development team.

I was not given any chance to reject the update to v15, nor to reject updates to the mods that depended on v14. As a result, v15 updated automatically, and some but not all of the mods updated automatically as well -- all without any advance warning nor option to decline.

I am using Steam on Mac and was, after the fact, able to downgrade RimWorld to v14, but I could not find any way to downgrade the mods. As a result, I can no longer open my saved game files in any version -- v14 or v15 -- and it seems inevitable now that my game-in-progress is completely destroyed.

Even a trivial email a week ahead of time warning "your saved game-files are about to break, so here are instructions how to turn off auto-updates" would have been enough to avert such game-breaking behavior. Could you not be bothered to take such a simple yet fundamental action?

Of course, it's just a game, and not particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but still, I'd put a lot of hours into it and would have liked to finish it. Indeed, I am more upset at the basic rudeness and lack of courtesy evinced by the development team choosing to break all games-in-progress without warning, than the actual loss of my saved game files.

In sum, I think that is really remarkably bad practice to force game-destroying updates onto users.

RimWorld is a fun game when it works, but this is the second time in the past few weeks I've encountered a major game-breaking bug, and I won't stick around to try for a third time. Who's to say that my next game won't be destroyed tomorrow, or next week, or next month?

Hopefully at some point the developers will learn sufficient courtesy for their end-users to provide either warning in advance that an update is coming, or better yet, backward compatibility of save-game files.

Unhappily yours,

Pawn of Destiny

[Diana Winters]

the only way to have mods not auto update is to manually download them from the forums

[MikeLemmer]

It's an alpha. Breakage is expected. That said, I'd say this is more of an issue with Steam's auto-update policy than the devs themselves. If you really want to manually choose when to update, I'd suggest downloading the game somewhere else (I'm sure someone can provide a proper link). Either that or keep an eye on these forums; we've been discussing & testing the new patch for over a week now.

[NolanSyKinsley]

In steam right click on rimworld>properties>beta tab, in the dropdown select the a14 and close the dialogue. Mods may not work though as they are updating to A15.

If you want to keep your mods you would have to have downloaded them manually from the forum, or with steamcmd and made a second install.

[RemingtonRyder]

If individual mod developers decide to just update their existing mod on the Workshop instead of uploading an A15 version, that's not Tynan's fault.

If you still want to play A14 there's an opt-in branch for that.

[eadras]

The steam workshop may be convenient, but it is not a good tool for serious modding.  Take a little extra time and do it right, to prevent headaches like this.  If the mod authors still have the A14 versions available for manual download, you should be able to unsubscribe from the workshop and re-download the mods manually so you can finish your A14 game.

[KillTyrant]

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4zrotj/guide_how_to_update_an_a14_save_to_a15/

[ThiIsMe007]

Steam does NOT care about your "Do not update" (or whatever) settings.

I can sympathize with you that it's fairly infuriating that such a feature even exists, since Steam has NEVER meant for it to work as it should (or as most sane people would expect it to).

I lost many nice modded games in the past because of it, even before said pseudo-feature was introduced : on Bethesda games (TES3/4/5, Fallout NV), Paradox games (Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis), The Creative Assembly (Total War games), The Sims 3, Mount & Blade, there are too many to list them all. The only replies I ever got from Steam were the same that people still seem to get today : basically f*ck off, and be nice not to bother me while I collect your money .

Make yourself a favor in the future (and I'll repeat what I've already said before on these forums) : do not buy games on Steam (or other DRM-enforced platforms, like Origin) that you intend to play modded. Favor options where YOU decide what to do with the game. Buy them directly from the dev (which also increases their income for each sale!), on GOG or equivalent sites if they still exist.

The only games worth being purchased on Steam are games that are old enough not to be patched anymore, or that you know you will never mod (and even then I feel a DRM-free option is always superior).

I wish I had known this before, because I have hundreds of games on GOG by now, many of which are games that I moved from my Steam library. This costed me double price.

EDIT : To be accurate and complete, there are also games on Steam which do not require to be connected to Steam before you can launch them (so that you can move them around as you like on your disk, and create local static copies of the game) : "Divinity Original Sin" is one of these games.

[NolanSyKinsley]

I will post a how-to on making a separate installation from steam, using steam, so you can have a solid version that will not auto-update and can still download and use mods from the workshop without worrying about them auto updating as well.

It takes a little scripting, and using steamcmd, but is very flexible and can be used for other games as well.

[ThiIsMe007]

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4zrotj/guide_how_to_update_an_a14_save_to_a15/

I doubt this will help anyone if they have a game with (a14) mods that haven't been updated yet (to a15).

[PotatoeTater]

You know, before accusing people of not letting you know an update was coming, maybe you should read the devblog. Notice was given that an update was coming, as well as an email so you could turn your auto updates off for the game. You can also redownload all the old alpha 14 versions of the mods off the forums and manually places them back into the game yourself. It's not that hard to do and for all of us that have been playing since the beginning, it is how we have always had to do it.

[KillTyrant]

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4zrotj/guide_how_to_update_an_a14_save_to_a15/

I doubt this will help anyone if they have a game with (a14) mods that haven't been updated yet (to a15).

soooo.. then those people can wait for those mods to update to a15??

[ThiIsMe007]

soooo.. then those people can wait for those mods to update to a15??

That is certainly one way to look at the matter.

I prefer to see the issue as "how about Steam made it so that its "Do not update" feature did what it advertises ?"

[NolanSyKinsley]

soooo.. then those people can wait for those mods to update to a15??

That is certainly one way to look at the matter.

I prefer to see the issue as "how about Steam made it so that its "Do not update" feature did what it advertises ?"

Steam doesn't have a "do not update" feature...

[CannibarRechter]

> Steam doesn't have a "do not update" feature...

It used to. I'm not sure when it changed. I'd say it was there maybe two years ago, though. Hidden deep, but there. Now it's not even hidden. It's just gone.